User talk:Henkoba
Welcome Hello and welcome to - a Baldur's Gate franchise knowledge base built by the fans, built for the fans! Your contributions to the Aldeth Sashenstar page have made our community a better place, thank you and keep up the good work! Please do not hesitate to leave a message on my talk page if I can be of any help. CompleCCity (talk) 15:20, July 3, 2018 (UTC) … now in person. Hi there! That message above was written by a bot who placed my name into it, as I'am the latest editing administrator. Now I say "welcome" myself. :) Thanks for your small but useful edits. Having more images is always good. However, I've made some minor (hope, you think the same) changes to them. Just recently, for example, I've removed the second placing of the same image from the Hall of Wonders gallery – there's no need to have it twice on the page. Also I removed the linking to the page itself from the images. There are only a very few reasons to have an image not linking to its own file page. And the "Gallery" header should be there as well, even on very short pages. If I'm making more edits, I'll try to leave detailed edit summaries, so you can read there what I changed and why. But you're also welcome on my talk page. Happy further editing! -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 19:16, July 5, 2018 (UTC) :I wasn't worried. ;) :And I've also noticed that you already had implemented things in your later edits that I'm talking about here, but before posting it. So quite unnecessary, my comment. :) :As for the proper leaving of a comment on my talk page – you don't worry, I have to clean up that page anyway. (A header would have been nice, but I will add this myself later.) :There's many different "styles" for all articles on this wiki, I even wouldn't call them "style". If you want something like a guideline about proper formatting and styles, you could take a look into the Model Pages, that are also linked in the top menu under "Community". But those also have some inconsistencies and don't always reflect what I'' would like personally as layout choices. :Make your edits, use the preview feature, see if I change something and read the summary – but mainly add your things and format them the way you think is appropriate and looking nice. :) -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 13:00, July 6, 2018 (UTC) Loot icons Hi. Sorry for having to tell you this, but "drop icons" are a ''legacy field in the creature infobox, and shouldn't be used anymore (see template description, bottom). So your latest ones on Bregg and Cohrvale have to go again. -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 23:05, July 16, 2018 (UTC) : Not sure where I copied the drop icons from but I will stop adding them and use the real template from now :) : Henkoba (talk) 23:52, July 16, 2018 (UTC) ::Thanks! :) -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 21:01, July 20, 2018 (UTC) Dialogue template And "hi" again. We could surely need a dialogue template here on the wiki, a standard formatting for dialogue sections on character or quest pages. And you seem to think similar. Do you have other ideas than using text- and background-coloring for the conversation partners? Because that looks … uhm … odd, sorry. ;) But I'm open for alternatives! :) -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 23:20, July 16, 2018 (UTC) : Hi :) : I was playing around with color because plain text seems a bit, plain :) I was also trying to highlight that there were two different ruffians with the same "name". : So the goal was to mimic the ingame dialoge. But using the same colors did not mix well with the background color here, so the border was added to make it readable, and it just went super messy. : I was browsing the wiki for other inspiration, but life came between me and my pc :) : Henkoba (talk) 23:45, July 16, 2018 (UTC) : Hello : I'm added two alternatives on https://baldursgate.wikia.com/wiki/Amalas : Any thoughts? : I kinda like the color on black background, but takes some time to create : Henkoba (talk) 11:07, July 21, 2018 (UTC) ::Also hi! ::Sorry, I've undone that experiment. That's an official article – for testing purposes sandboxes are used. This wiki has a public one, Baldur's Gate Wiki:Sandbox; alternatively you can create your own one in your userspace: User:Henkoba/Sandbox. As the latter would be in your userspace, nobody else has to touch it and you can experiment as much as you like. In the public one it might happen that somebody else arrives and edits your stuff, deletes it, whatever … So I leave this decision to you. ::Then simply visit this revision of the page, go into edit mode (don't care about the outdated warning) and copy-paste it all into the sandbox you chose. Save, and it's back to fiddle around with it. :) ::So much for the technical stuff … ::Now some feedback. ::I'm pretty occupied, and haven't taken a detailed look into the table, but I can tell you that switching to a black background on large sections of many pages on the wiki won't be an option. That would only work with a general change of color styling for the whole wiki. As I'm relatively new here, compared to the years of history of the wiki, I have no idea who and when made the choices for the current scheme, or if there ever have been thoughts to change something. Personally I would like a change, but problem ::# I'm highly red-green color blind, so far from an optimal position to implement or even create a new scheme; and ::# this would need feedback, input and approval of the community and the other wiki staff. ::Hence I'd say, let's stick to the existent colors for now and create something that doesn't heavily rely on them. ::Currently I'm dealing with something similar myself – overhaul of dialogue (and, admittedly, close to sandbox content, though on an established page) –, so it might happen that I come around with own ideas over short or long. -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 21:40, July 21, 2018 (UTC) A word about proficiencies Hi. Just noticed the bold weapon mastery in all skills that Lea'liyl was given by the developers. ;) Unfortunately the thing with weapon proficiencies is that many, many, many … really many! creatures since BGII don't benefit from them at all. Because what's set in the creature's file as Large sword, Blunt weapon and such doesn't count in BGII and all Enhanced Editions anymore. I haven't counted or checked all, but in my experience most creatures in BGII (and BGI:EE) have absolutely no proficiency bonuses anymore – unless you see a Modify proficiencies (223) effect right on the Near Infinity creature overview, below the portrait. (Companions have these, for example.) What I'm not sure about, do all these creatures now suffer from penalties? Seems so, as some BG fixpacks indeed add these effects to many of the creatures that don't have it. So, if you're not adding BGI information, ignore the regular creature file's weapon proficiencies and write None, unless they have at least one of these effect files (you will see what they do when you look at one). And for BGI you have to distinguish between original (those fields) and enhanced (the effects). Big oversight by the developers! Or simply laziness. Sadly. -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 13:47, August 12, 2018 (UTC) : Hi! : I see, I'll ignore theese attribues from now on. I just found and downloaded the latest version of infinity explorer, where I noticed a lot more attributes, I previously used some version from 2003. : While on the subject of attributes. I noticed that creatures both have a "Sex" and a "Gender". This demon, among others, has gender = Neither, (shown on the first page in infinity explorer), while the "Sex" = "Male". Does this mean the demon is a "neither" or "Male" or something else entierly? What value should be put in the infobox? : I think the creature infobox template could be more guiding on this subject, also how to format things (like location :) ) : Henkoba (talk) 16:06, August 12, 2018 (UTC) ::According to IESDP's creature file format, "gender" seems to have more functionality. There's no mention of what happens when both fields differ, though. As only gender is shown on the NI's stats page, I seem to have completely ignored "sex" until now – thanks for hinting me to that! :) Uhm, in the past I've gone the obvious path regarding an undefined gender, or took what's in the animation below. In most cases accompanied by a note on the artcile about what's technically happening, but that may appear a bit excessive by me. ;) ::Many things you can decide by your own good sense. ::* An elf or a human being with "niether" as gender doesn't work, except they would be trans, which I think applies to only one single character in SoD. So there you would have to give a correct gender. ::* If "gender" and "sex" differ, take the one that's obviously correct. (Or ignore "sex", as NI does on the stats.) ::* For creatures we don't know much about their biology it can be left empty if nothing's stated. Or look for information about the creature on Forgotten Realms Wiki (place somewhere on the page, go into preview, and click the link). ::* I even doubt if we should state e.g. golems as male (are they? haven't checked), even if they would be technically. Okay, they have distinctive "male proportions", but look at other golems, such as Shale in DA:O. Not sure about that – would have to read the lore article first. ::* Vampiric Wolf or Dire Wolf, technically male, I think. But, c'mon: how do they survive if every pack we encounter on the whole Sword Coast only consists of males? So that's too a sort of article I'm not sure if that information should appear at all, creature file value aside. ::Yeah, many thoughts. I also plan several changes to the infoboxes in general, some new formatting, auto-categorization, such things. Maybe in that process something gets established regarding the locations section. Until then: do it as you think it fits. I just didn't like that "x= …" or only the area code instead of its name, you placed there once or twice. At an earlier state, the infobox had separate fields for each of these, but Islandking decided to shorten this and put all into one field. We had some talk about the formatting, and I also got that "do it as you think it fits". I then at some point of time switched to that "small"-formatting of area and co-ordinates. Later I started to place those in links to the respective pages. Perhaps in two months from now I don't like either anymore, and do it completely different. As long as there are no real guidelines here … ;) But perhaps a change of formatting in the infobox will simply define it. Perhaps I seperate the fields again, and you simply have to place the values, and not care about their look. ::By the way, Near Infinity has a check for updates option. ::Hey, I've started looking into that color scheming thing of the wiki. ;) -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 16:38, August 12, 2018 (UTC) Interested? Hi! There's a current suggestion for the revamp of a large page. Wanna take part? -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 22:41, May 18, 2019 (UTC) : Hello : I think it seems like a good idea. But I dont think I have enough time to participate in a major rewrite. : Henkoba (talk) 20:06, May 19, 2019 (UTC) ::It suffices when you make your point on the discussion itself – it wasn't about participating in the work, only your opinion is asked. :) -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 20:19, May 19, 2019 (UTC) Creature only items and such Hello. Just read your "Not sure how to show the resistances gained from the KUORING". The idea behind how you've done it for the desert troll with those transcluded item pages ( etc.) was to have articles for each of these items on the wiki some day. They would include code to only show specific information if transcluded as this, e.g. a bullet point list of effects. Until today, only one such item exists here, RING99. It's your decision: go on with how you're doing it, expecting these items to be created in the future, or explain what they do in the gameplay section or … I've just started to give item articles a "statistics" section right behind the table of contents, and will do also for spells – does an appropriate name for such a section on a creature article come to your mind? -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 21:31, May 19, 2019 (UTC) : Can the RING99 (infobox) be used as template for creating, say KUORING? Looking at the source It seems rather complex, and I dont really grasp the use of onlyinclude/includeonly etc. : Henkoba (talk) 19:43, May 20, 2019 (UTC) ::Phew, that topic is months old, and I don't really have an opinion on it today. You can read through a discussion about it here (it started with the topic above). ::After having read this myself again, I'd prefer not to use an infobox for such items, or an extra, new one instead. But as Kaczor says, the code used inside it would also work as pure main page content. ::The alternative is to make such items a template rather than main namespace articles, e.g. Template:KUORING (it doesn't exist, yet, it's only shown in green). You can write it the same way as an article, with all those include-tags, and then use it in curly brackets on a page. ::Feel free to create it, no sandbox necessary. ::-- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 20:21, May 20, 2019 (UTC) ::: Some of the wiki format discussion is kinda above my head, I think I have to read more about the use of wiki tags and ways to format information. :::I do think a popup similar to would be a nice way to display the ring information, so I'll look into that tomorrow. ::: Henkoba (talk) 20:48, May 21, 2019 (UTC) ::::As it was for mine, LOL. ::::*… – not shown on the page itself, but applies to pages that call it ::::*… – only shown on the page itself, but doesn't apply to pages that call it ::::*… – defines the content that's shown on pages calling this one :::::(Hope, I'm right with these explanations …) ::::A popup is a nice idea for this, but not with the CSS that's used for those templates: too many issues (actually, I hate those icons). ::::-- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 13:42, May 22, 2019 (UTC) ::::: ::::: I think it needs some tuning... :) ::::: edit: for somet reason its a "popup" on my sandbox, and here the text is just displayed. I dont understand why... ::::: Henkoba (talk) 20:46, May 23, 2019 (UTC) About infoboxes Hello! Some notes about the creature infobox specifically and our infoboxes and editing in general: *If you're not sure about the games in which something appears, please don't fill the according parameters with "no" – leave them empty instead. *That also applies to other parameters – if you're not sure, leave them empty, even without ". *The upper part of the creature infobox, down to allegiance, works best without link brackets or anything more than just a plain word (singular); the page will then automatically be categorized if "allowed" values are used. This, however, doesn't work anymore if additional things have to be noted, such as the class being different throughout the games. The way you've recently placed e.g. the male gender for the kuo-toa broke that auto-categorization system for the articles. That's one of the things I've fixed: replaced "*Male " with a simple "Male". It's also unnecessary to make this a bullet point list if only one item is presented. *Speaking of lists: as the Kuo-toan Warrior appears in several more places, these may become too extensive to be listed inside the infobox; in such cases I place a link to the locations' section there instead: See locations *By the way, I've renamed both pages to the correct in-game spelling, with a lowercase "t". *You can use many more links for the things you note on articles, such as Kuo-toan Bolts or True Sight. ;) *If you think, it's necessary to have a link with lowercases, create one, open "more +" (speaking of the classic editor) in the editing toolbar and choose #REDIRECT [[]], then add the uppercase article name to the brackets. I did such for the desert troll. Please don't forget to add the category:Redirects with capitalization variants. I've added the KUORING abilities. Keep up the good work! -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 13:24, May 20, 2019 (UTC) Oh, and extra cudos for your comprehension of that 2da file! A surprising ability, looking at the standard contributor here. :) -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 13:26, May 20, 2019 (UTC) Something I forgot above: it is common on the wiki to use all-uppercase for all things, "code" related – read: filenames. That's the reason why a creature's AI scripts should use it, too, as you are doing. (That applies also to the often lowercase filenames from the Enhanced Editions new things – write them down in uppercase.) In the case of the "script_name", however, please refer to the exact capitalization, the games use – it's not really the file''name ''of a script, it's a name used by scripts. -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 13:48, May 20, 2019 (UTC) : Thanks for the information. There is SO many things to consider when editing. I'll do my best to follow them. : Regarding editor, I prefer the "Source" editor because I think its easier ot copy-paste the "code" from other articles and change the parts that differ (i'm a bit lazy). : : Should i use |Script (DRAGRED.bcs) as a template when creating a script article ex TROLDE01.bcs) ? Are there any discussions regarding scripts? : : I have created a page for TROLDE01 by clicking the script link on Desert troll : Have to sleep now, I'll check again tomorrow. : Henkoba (talk) 20:06, May 20, 2019 (UTC) ::If considering things gets too much, I'm still here and can fix them. :) Thought, however, that may become annoying to you, so I wanted to explain to you what exactly I'm "fixing". And I indeed have noticed some copy-paste errors, such as the XP value from one creature inside the infobox of another with an actually different value. ;) Yeah, such things happen – to me as well. ::Regarding the script: read the topic below, but only the half of it. I've misinterpreted something there … ::Uhm… there's no discussion, and the dragred.bcs apparently was the only thing our previous administrator had started in that direction. I din't know about that one, so I set up my own structure for these things, as you can see in the categories BCS and its parent game source files. Though I only load up to them once in a while. If you plan to do so more often, check my changes on your script. And of course ideas on that topic are welcome. Have (had) a good night. -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 20:55, May 20, 2019 (UTC) ::: I think the 'game source files' could more "visible", maybe add a shortcut in one of the dropdown menus (Browse/Game Mechanics/Source files ) . :::I think tried searching for "scripts" or something similar yesterday and I only found the dragred page. It doesnt appear in any of the top hits any longer though (atleast when searching for script). ::: I appriciate the explanations and I prefer a wiki where most pages use a similar layout/format/etc. :) ::: Henkoba (talk) 20:35, May 21, 2019 (UTC) ::::I followed your advice – see "Browse". I've also added a description to the scripts and to the parent category. ::::You don't find it anymore this easily because I've renamed the page to Baldur's Gate Wiki:Game source files/BCS/DRAGRED. ::::You're welcome! :) -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 13:47, May 22, 2019 (UTC) ::::Oh, and please use the original template code for the next creature you're creating – it contains new parameters, as well as a slight change in order of other ones. (Also for items and more.) -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 13:53, May 22, 2019 (UTC) Game source files Sorry, I made an error when adding that red link. I've moved your new page to Baldur's Gate Wiki:Game source files/BCS/TROLDE01. -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 20:24, May 20, 2019 (UTC) :And made adjustments so that it matches other similar pages. I hope, you don't mind. "Behavior"? Do you plan to write a comprehensible interpretation of it? ;) -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 20:32, May 20, 2019 (UTC) :I didn't know about Script (DRAGRED.bcs) – oops? -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 20:33, May 20, 2019 (UTC) KUORING Ha, started experimenting! :) I'd leave the resistances out that are covered elsewhere in the creature infobox. Happy editing! -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 20:29, May 23, 2019 (UTC) : Yea I have almost no idea what im doing :D But I think it almost works like I wanted it to. The layout could probably use some work, but I'll leave it for the night. : : Henkoba (talk) 21:28, May 23, 2019 (UTC) ::Then I'll give you some more time before intruding. ;) ::Keep font-sizes in mind (haven't really checked those on the icon templates): scale text down to 85%. As this will be used inside of them only (I guess), it might be better to not set it to 115%. (By the way, it would have to be 117–118% to negate that – perhaps I'll go fixing that in the other templates …) ::And I think, I don't like that frame, but am not really "fond of css", either, so I'd have to look deeper into things to tell how to disable it. (Not in the mood, just now ;) ::Perhaps you add an infobox to your sandbox and test it as it's intended to be used … ::And … "is it poping?" – that last word lacks a letter, I think. But which one may that be? :p ::-- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 13:23, May 24, 2019 (UTC) IB creature AI section Just a short note: adding the complete path to the AI scripts is only necessary if the field holds more information than just the script name, e.g. two scripts for different games or a note added – if this isn't the case, you can just write the plain name down. It will automatically generate a link if the page exists. (Though you don't get an easy-to-follow red link then, but that's intention.) -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 11:26, May 24, 2019 (UTC)